Official Blog of Author MICHAEL THOMAS BARRY.
A blog which discusses varied topics that are related to the authors many books. Michael is a columnist for CrimeMagazine.com and a reviewer for the New York Journal of Books.
Questions or comments can be sent to ocauthor6434@gmail.com

On March 2, 1978, two men steal the corpse of silent film
actor Charlie Chaplin from a cemetery in the Swiss village of
Corsier-sur-Vevey, located in the hills above Lake Geneva, near Lausanne,
Switzerland. A comic actor who was perhaps most famous for his alter ego, the
Little Tramp, Chaplin was also a respected filmmaker whose career spanned
Hollywood’s silent film era and the momentous transition to “talkies” in the
late 1920s.

After Chaplin’s widow, Oona, received a ransom demand of
some $600,000, police began monitoring her phone and watching 200 phone kiosks
in the region. Oona had refused to pay the ransom, saying that her husband
would have thought the demand was preposterous. The callers later made threats
against her two youngest children. Oona Chaplin was Charlie’s fourth wife and
the daughter of the playwright Eugene O’Neill. She and Chaplin were married in
1943, when she was 18 and he was 54; they had eight children together. The
family had settled in Switzerland in 1952 after Chaplin was accused of being a
Communist sympathizer.

After a five-week investigation, police arrested two auto
mechanics, Roman Wardas, of Poland, and Gantscho Ganev, of Bulgaria. On May 17 they
led authorities to Chaplin’s body, which they had buried in a cornfield about
one mile from the Chaplin family’s home in Corsier. Political refugees from
Eastern Europe, Wardas and Ganev apparently stole Chaplin’s body in an attempt
to solve their financial problems. Wardas, identified as the mastermind of the
plot, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years of hard labor. As he told it, he
was inspired by a similar crime that he had read about in an Italian newspaper.
Ganev was given an 18-month suspended sentence, as he was believed to have
limited responsibility for the crime. As for Chaplin, his family reburied his
body in a concrete grave to prevent future theft attempts.

Check back every
Monday for a new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”

Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author
of six nonfiction books that includes Murder
and Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked Early California. Visit Michael’s website
www.michaelthomasbarry.com for
more information. His book can be purchased from Amazon through the following
link: